The art direction in D&D hasn't supported "gritty realism" since 1st edition, but people still play that style of game. The art exists to sell books, not tell you what your home game should look like (otherwise 1st edition would look like black and white pencil drawings). People ignore the art all the time. My Eberron is big on 1920s fashion, despite it not being in any of the official art. The current art style simply reflects current fashions in fantasy art - compare it to The Veilguard for example.
Whilst this is fun, it's largely beside the point, and it's funny that you say that re: Eberron, given Eberron has a massive 1920s vibe, which was conveyed in large part through the art! Maybe not to 1920s fashion specifically (I'm not an expert on fashion from that era, I must confess), but certainly vibe.
As for current fashions in fantasy art, sure, but art direction exists, it's not a random assemblage of fantasy clip art from the last two years or something. Veilguard actually helps illustrate this, as its art is vastly more realistic in style (despite insane-person criticisms about "Pixar", which are actually down to numpties not understanding what subsurface scattering is) than 5E, far less stylized, and tending far more towards the dark.
And yet I use it all the time, and it appears in official D&D products like Rime of the Frostmaiden. It's a style. It doesn't need specific rules.
What definition of "sci-fi horror" are we using here? I can't think of one that includes RotF. You seem very convinced though - you want to clarify what you're referencing in spoiler blocks? I would note that it's very possible to nod to The Thing or Alien or the like without in any way actually "doing horror".
Re: rules it needs a ruleset that can actually support the vibe beyond the superficial, and D&D 5E just doesn't have that.
We can put a superficial veneer on sure, but it's a millimetre deep and the moment it gets tested it's obviously just aesthetics.
So WotC themselves clearly use source material which has never been mentioned, and cannot be mentioned, in any Appendix N. So what would be the point?
I already answered this upthread.
If you want D&D that is influenced by both sci fi horror and Carry On humour, look no further than Baldur’s Gate 3!
Glad I'm not the only one who caught how specifically Carry On-esque some of the stuff in a certain location in Act 3 was! They were even doing Carry On-style voices!
Doctor Who managed to work round that issue in 1970s (although not without attracting criticism) by not being too explicit, and having ropy FX. We had Genesis of the Daleks (Nazis), The Ark in Space (Alien before Ridley Scott) and The Seeds of Doom (The Thing before John Carpenter), amongst others.
For sure, but that's writers and directors essentially attempting to evade a BBC mandate, back in an era when evading mandates was a hell of a lot easier.
Whereas with WotC, I don't think they have adventure writers who are trying to "fly under the radar" or "work around" things to make them more horrifying. RotF is from when WotC began the whole child-friendly-ization of D&D, so presumably escaped the same kind of deal. And it's a corporate company with tighter (if incompetent) control over its messaging. They might miss obvious racism, but I don't think they're going to miss an obvious innuendo or horror element. We shall see of course.
But WotC does have adult oriented stuff as well, like Baldur's Gate 3, and there is adult focused D&D-adjacent media, like the Critical Role cartoon. I wouldn't say current D&D is aimed squarely at children, it just avoids anything that is likely to upset parents in the core products.
Neither of those are WotC, and BG3 was specifically notable for how different its tone is to all of 5E's official products. And WotC managed to sever that relationship, so that's over. Critical Role is obviously not WotC and again the discontinuity of the vibe between that and WotC's own output is increasingly being noted, even by younger people. Re: aimed squarely at children, I concur - it's on the way there, but it's not there yet - and I don't object to including children, to be clear - quite the contrary, but I think WotC's drive to make D&D super-safe is inevitably going to mean D&D starts looking a bit "lame" to teenagers through young adults as a group. It happened with 2E (sure 2E was edgier than 5E is, but also the '90s were wildly edgier in youth culture terms, especially other RPGs), and it feels like they're going more extreme this time.
But this actually brings us back to art and appendix N. A lot of the vibe of an RPG is contained in the art, particularly for newer and younger players, so it's important that you pick art that gives the right vibe for your RPG - and 5E 2024 I think has done that, but it's a vibe that's somewhat divergent from where a lot of fantasy is going today, which is to say, more fantasy art is rather more towards the gritty than it was 5-10 years ago. Recommendations re: media (which don't necessarily have to be true inspirations, just vibe carriers) for 5E are this made more difficult in another way, beyond parent-offending, in that 2024's main vibe is somewhat at odds with much of fantasy (the deep fear of parent-offending is clearly the main issue though).
